Woody Allen thinks he should be the "poster boy" for #MeToo—but, like, in a good way
Today in, “I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Woody Allen says in a new interview that he should be “the poster boy for the #MeToo Movement”—which he kind of already is, as an example of a powerful man whose career has continued unabated despite allegations of sexual abuse. Allen doesn’t mean it like that, though. He means as a good guy.
The Wrap has a transcription of the interview, with Argentinian news show Periodismo Para Todos, the kind of thing that in the pre-internet era would have been limited in its exposure to the few dumbstruck Argentinians who saw it live. But it’s 2018, which means Allen’s ability to ignore the gigantic elephant in the room with his face on it knows no borders.
In the interview, Allen says, “I’m a big advocate of the #MeToo movement,” which, thanks, we guess? He adds that he should be the face of this particular movement because, in his 50 years in show business, he’s never been accused of “any kind of impropriety at all” by the actresses he’s worked with. “I’ve always had a wonderful record with them,” he says. And there’s some truth to that: Although that tide has turned in recent months, he’s certainly enjoyed the protection of many of the actresses who have worked with him, notably Diane Keaton and Kate Winslet, over the years.
But to get right down to it: Why would Woody Allen need protecting, anyway? Well, because he’s been accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of his ex Mia Farrow, when Dylan was a small child. In 2014, Dylan wrote in The New York Times: “[W]hen I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me.”
Allen finds it horribly unfair that this one allegation—which wasn’t even on a movie set!—gets him branded as a predator, telling Periodismo Para Todos, “what bothers me is that I get linked in with” the Harvey Weinsteins of the world. “People who have been accused by 20 women, 50 women, 100 women of abuse and abuse and abuse—and I, who was only accused by one woman in a child custody case which was looked at and proven to be untrue, I get lumped in with these people,” he says.
That last statement refers to the first time charges of molestation were brought against Allen by Dylan’s adoptive mother Mia Farrow, which was back in 1993. At the time, the allegations were investigated and dismissed by the Yale-New Haven hospital and by New York state officials. As an adult, Dylan Farrow has renewed her mission to speak out about the abuse she says she suffered at Allen’s hands, most recently appearing on CBS This Morning to talk about it back in January. Allen, meanwhile, has maintained that Mia Farrow coached her daughter to frame him as part of a “contentious breakup.”